Of all the classical ballets there is surely none that translates better to the medium of ice dance than Swan Lake.

Perfectly suited to the scenes on the lake, where the swans are able to execute an elegant, sweeping passage across the water, the special techniques of skating — the speed, the spins, the thrilling leaps and amazing lifts — make for eye-popping action elsewhere in the work.

The Imperial Ice Stars, on the frozen stage of Aylesbury Waterside Theatre this week, are nothing less than sensational. The company features 25 of Russia’s top skaters. Many have been on blades since the age of four; between them they possess a haul of more than 200 competition medals.

The technically minded will see everything they would expect of the special skills of the dancers — their triple flips, death spirals and camel spins.

The rest of us, who might not know an axel from a salchow, can just sit back and enjoy the spectacle — and the story.

Artistic director Tony Mercer offers a subtly different take on the tale, in which Andrei Penkin’s strapping Prince Siegfried faces a fight for his soul between good and evil. These extremes are represented in the characters of the lovely white swan Odette (Olga Sharutenko) and the black swan Odile (Olena Pyatash), the creature of the evil Baron von Rothbart (Vadim Yarkov), though less bent to his will, we later learn, than he supposes.

That the same dancer is not sharing the two roles (as is usual in Swan Lake) permits of stunning set-piece routines involving them and the prince.

Some of the fieriest dancing on display is seen from Siegfried’s companion Benno (Ruslan Novoseltsev), and there is amazing work, too, from the company in the various national dances.

Until Saturday. Box office: telephone: 0844 871 7607 (www.ambassadortickets.com/aylesbury)